8 ms·

Persona - A concept email client

162 points by basil 15y ago

ujjvala 15y ago
Nothing new.
karolist 15y ago
Looks cool and polished. Email client space is heating up, I wonder how this will fare against sparrow. By the way, does anyone know how the DOF effect in the video is achieved? Guess it was added during post processing in software.
- xelfer 15y ago
  I'm guessing it was filmed with a Digital SLR with a high aperture lens, something like a 50mm 1.4 or 1.8 (doesn't look shallow enough for a 1.2).
  - evilswan 15y ago
    Agree, looks about 1.4 fully-open.
- danieldk 15y ago
  Indeed, more competition is good. Apple has finally spiced up Mail.app to have a conversation view, and far better filtering.
  - chum4ever 15y ago
    Did you try mail.zoho.com, The conversation view they have is interesting.
dfischer 15y ago
I really don't want to use desktop software anymore. Am I the only one that feels this way?
- mvzink 15y ago
  No, you seem to be with the majority. But I really don't want to use web software any more. I might be the only one, but hopefully not.
  - TeMPOraL 15y ago
    You're not the only one. I don't really like web applications too. It is irrational of me, but I really feel better about desktop, on-line software. I think I don't really trust "the Internet" and "the Cloud", and would like my computer to be usable even after the whole networking infrastructure burns down.
    - gjm11 15y ago
      I tend to feel the same way, but you have to ask: Which is more likely to burn down, the whole networking infrastructure or my house?
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
      - TeMPOraL 15y ago
        Yes, you have. That's why I said it's a bit irrational for me. I can't shake off the feeling that the whole Internet will go down one day, even though it's more likely that a car will hit me twice before. Maybe it's because I'm looking for solutions that will last for long years, not the apps that I have to change every three or so months. I guess this is not possible nowdays.
      - a3_nm 15y ago
        You can keep the master copy at home but do (encrypted) backups on the cloud. I find it much more reassuring than the other way round (put everything in the cloud, maybe backup locally every now and then).
      - Gormo 15y ago
        Perhaps the OP was using hyperbole: it does seem more likely for reliance on external infrastructure to be disrupted by something beyond your control than for your own tools to stop functioning in a way that you can't correct. There are also other effects of externalizing your tools that don't relate to continuity of uptime: levels of complexity, adaptability, security, and manageability of change all have different values for web-based and desktop software.
threepointone 15y ago
Sigur Ros for the soundtrack? Nicely done!
steffoz 15y ago
definitely interesting the distraction free sending email dialog!
kefs 15y ago
autoplay? :(
- brown9-2 15y ago
  I'd love to see the results of an A/B test to see how people respond to autoplaying videos. Seems like a big turn-off.
TeMPOraL 15y ago
While I think that the video would use a change in voice-over (something more clear and more emotional), there was something touching that moved me near the end and made me think about people and simple, day-to-day life. Maybe it's the sountrack. Anyway, well done :).
- michael_dorfman 15y ago
  The soundtrack is "Ágætis Byrjun" by Sigur Rós-- I'm not sure how they'd feel about their stuff being used in a commercial setting.
  - socksy 15y ago
    Apparently not necessarily well: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/media/homage-or-fromage.php http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/media/homage-or-fromage.php They might be wise to change the music.
  - jerryr 15y ago
    Yeah, and the vocals compete with the narrative, so they might want to change it regardless.
dreww 15y ago
i think this is intended to be, and will always remain, vaporware. or perhaps i misunderstand what is meant by "concept".
haydenchambers 15y ago
theres no reason why this sort of experience couldn’t be achieved my merging gmail and g+ a little more closely
shimonamit 15y ago
Aside question: Can anyone elaborate a little bit on the camera, lenses, and graphical effects used to produce the blur/focus effect in this video?
- tincholio 15y ago
  I don't know how they did it, but it could have been easily done with a DSLR with video capabilities and a decent fast lens. Note that the camera was mostly static, except for example when doing minute panning movements (not too smooth, so probably they didn't have the right type tripod head) towards the right and shifting focus so as to put the viewer's attention on the different icons.
  - shimonamit 15y ago
    Ah, thanks. So most if not all the smarts were in the camera, not in the post-shooting graphic polish?
    - marksu 15y ago
      Simulated Depth of Field on flat surfaces like this can easily be made in post production using After Effects for example. Here is an old tutorial I found http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/2d_depth_of_field/ http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/2d_depth_of_field/ You could probably add even more flair by using a 3d camera in AE with DOF enabled, I've done this before and it can look really slick if used well.
  - socksy 15y ago
    I didn't spot any panning at all - just how abruptly focus had changed. However, there were quite a few jumps where panning would have been more appropriate (imo). One trick to getting smooth pans with a cheap tripod is to use a rubber band around the handle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6fMcJ18aA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6fMcJ18aA
ssn 15y ago
Is this being developed? I think that there are some original and interesting ideas in there.
Derbasti 15y ago
They are advancing the concept of 'conversations' that Gmail introduced in an interesting direction. Basically, the second tab at the top is the Gmail conversation view. This view collects emails by topic, which makes it behave more like a threaded discussion board in a way. The interesting part is the first tab though, the 'people' view. They seem to go for an IM-style persistent conversation log between a fixed set of people. That is quite an interesting way of looking at conversations, pushing email further from the original 'digital letter' towards shorter, more transient messages. Basically, it tries to make email behave more like a persistent IM chat. I find it interesting how the email protocol gets pushed more and more in the background and applications implement their own interfaces on top of it. Email seems to evolve from the definite way of sending stuff over the internet towards just one other communication protocol that is more or less on equal footing with, say, Jabber, or Facebook, or maybe even Twitter. What with Facebook integrating email into its site and Google dumping IM chat logs in your Gmail inbox, there is even some sort of cross-protocol talk. This gets even more obvious with Facebook or Google+ or Twitter sending you emails whenever you receive messages on their platform. Now if you could reply to these emails and the platform would 'do the right thing', this would actually implement email as a ubiquitous interface to all of these services. Interesting times!
- jorangreef 15y ago
  The concept screenshots have been designed using data that displays well in an IM-style conversation log, but how would it work for traditionally formatted email (e.g. Dear, regards, long signature, messy disclaimer, quoted text, html newsletters)? That is where the sender has one idea of how email should look like, and the receiver has another?
  - Derbasti 15y ago
    I would guess that just like in Gmail, quoted texts get collapsed, signatures get faded. Basically, Gmail works, too, so this is probably a solved problem. And personally, I think the world would be a better place without disclaimers anyway, so they might as well delete them outright. But maybe that is just me.
- 15y ago
knowtheory 15y ago
So... they've turned email into Facebook? Is that the idea? :P
- farlington 15y ago
  I think it's a great idea. Don't most people you know use facebook instead of email for personal correspondence?
  - knowtheory 15y ago
    no? For one i loathe Facebook's interface. But by and large nearly all of my communication is by instant messenger, skype, email, phone, or some combination of the above. And I basically live online since i work in a distributed team.
    - farlington 15y ago
      That's cool. I use many different means to communicate too, mostly for work. But my friends and family members? For personal messages, like stuff that really matters, they send messages on facebook. My brothers, my sister, my mom, my dad—I can't remember the last time any of them emailed me anything. Maybe a travel itinerary. It could be that my experience, or the experience of my friends/family, is atypical, but I think there are a lot of people—tens or hundreds of millions—who use facebook that way, as their primary communication tool.
MaysonL 15y ago
So, is this merely a design fiction, or are there plans for this to actually exist and be available somewhere?
hm2k 15y ago
Their homepage is all image, no substance. I'm guessing their product is the same.
iaskwhy 15y ago
I think a lot about this since email clients still seem like something done by a developer without wasting much time thinking about the user experience. For instance, I'd say most personal email conversations are between only two people and yet we still can't see it as the usual chat view which is much more easier to read, like shown on the video and the screenshots. Please do it and keep improving it as there's a lot of potencial here. Good work!
rwmj 15y ago
Where is the analysis of how people already use email and how it fails? How is this going to improve the experience? There are a ton of research areas for email/messaging, such as those below. This seems to address none of them. - better searching - multiple sources (email, SMS, RSS, twitter .. in one place) - automatic classification of incoming email, flagging important items, separating personal and business etc - integrating to-do lists
- jorangreef 15y ago
  I am working on a web-based email client (https://ronomon.com https://ronomon.com) with offline access, instant boot, constant time search, and support for roughly four million emails. It takes some new approaches to threading, meta-discussions, multiple sources, attachments, and simple non-structured text to-do lists, and re-imagines the email client as a multiplayer rather than single-player tool. Could I let you know when it's ready?
  - mike-cardwell 15y ago
    Please let me know when this is ready. My contact details are in my profile. I love trying to break stuff like this, and I've managed to break lots of webmail and email clients in the past.
    - jorangreef 15y ago
      Thanks Mike, challenge accepted.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  Funny, all of that is in Gmail. (if you count IM/Buzz/G+ integration as part of 'multiple sources')
- farlington 15y ago
  It looks to me like it's going to improve the experience by making the experience more like facebook's messaging app. Most of my friends send messages via facebook rather than through email, because it's a better and more personal experience. Taking some of that experience to an email client is a killer idea. Why do email clients have to take their cues from other email clients? They feel stuck in the 90s. Many people have replaced email with facebook for personal use—it only makes sense that email clients should go there.
adamtulinius 15y ago
It is weird how replying on the conversations tab makes the user write the reply above the original message.
krmmalik 15y ago
Shame all the innovation in email clients seems to be happening predominantly on the Mac. Havent seen any Windows versions of any of these kind of apps. I wonder if we'll ever see an iPad version of anything like this, because i'd certainly be interested. On a side note, this further cements the idea that its still worthwhile to disrupt boring or old markets if they havent had disruption for a long time.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  Maybe this is because Windows is still predominantly a business market (except for games), where feature lists are more important than elegance or simplicity. Hence Outlook and its kin.
  - mattmanser 15y ago
    Kin? There's just outlook these days.
    - Derbasti 15y ago
      Isn't there, like, Eudora and some Oracle stuff, and several other corporate content management blobs that do complex email management, too?
      - dragonquest 15y ago
        Pegasus Mail (http://www.pmail.com http://www.pmail.com) is still going strong, slowly trudging towards the 5.0 release. Though there were a few hiccups related to the financial viability a couple of years ago, development is still going on and the product is still free.
    - bonaldi 15y ago
      Lotus Notes. It will never die.
  - krmmalik 15y ago
    Perhaps. I dont really know either way, but its still a shame. If Windows 8 delivers on its HTML5/JS native experience promise, then that could change a lot of things in the future, since many developers could develop for the desktop and web platform simultaneously - Although knowing Microsoft maybe thats a little too ambitious.
chrischen 15y ago
Turn this into a web interface, allow some emails to be retrieved by the public, and you've got another facebook clone!
markokocic 15y ago
Seems like the concept of providing more "human" or "natural" interaction between user and computer is becoming more and more pervasive, and Persona is just another example about that. I don't know what to think about it. As a casual user, I like it. It make interaction with the computer effortless. On the other side, as a power user, I still like to Unix philosophy of small powerfull tools and an easy ways to combine and automate them. I really hope someone will eventually find a way to mix both of those concepts and bring software to the next level.
fingerprinter 15y ago
I like what he is saying and what they are showing, but email and particularly this type of email client will be all about the small touches. I just can't get a sense for something like this until I feel it for myself.
beaumartinez 15y ago
I don't normally mind artsy but this is ridiculous. The video is zoomed, focused, and tilted to excess. Am I supposed to get a meaningful impression of it that way?
- nateberkopec 15y ago
  Yeah, someone's been watching way too many Google product videos and decided to turn it up to 11.
- geraldalewis 15y ago
  I was at a bar with a friend the other night, and he took a picture using a flash. I took one by holding very still so I could take a longer exposure without the flash. His image accurately recorded the scene in detail. Mine recorded the feel. I think you're supposed to get an emotional impression, instead of an explicit idea of how the software works.
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    My emotional impression was that I couldn't see the bloody software. It was more like a wedding movie for the MacBooks than a product presentation.
geuis 15y ago
1) Build it. Concept videos are nice and all, but its vaporware till people can use it. 2) I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another. Build this as a web app, not a strict desktop client. Also, as a web app its relatively easy these days to wrap it in a framework that will present it as a desktop app if someone wants to use it that way.
- rmc 15y ago
  I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another. Build this as a web app, not a strict desktop client. The demo has it running on OSX. OSX users are more open to the idea of having (and paying for) a desktop application. From a business perspective, an OSX desktop application might make sense.
- nhebb 15y ago
  2) I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another If you're interested in stats, Campaign Monitor posts a monthly report on email client popularity: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/ Also note the Movers and Shakers stats at the bottom.
  - ra 15y ago
    That's a nice resource. Thanks!
  - danohuiginn 15y ago
    There sure is a lot written about gmail, relative to its market share. apparently hotmail and yahoo mail are both more popular.
    - judofyr 15y ago
      Note the fine print: The email client a person is using can only be detected if images are displayed. This can give an inflated weighting to email clients that display images by default, such as Outlook 2000 and the iPhone. It will also provide a lesser weighting to those that block images by default such as Gmail and Outlook 2007. Those email clients that aren't capable of displaying images, such as older Blackberry models and other mobile devices cannot be included in this study.
jgrahamc 15y ago
I shall now deploy my catch phrase: Shut Up and Ship! (http://blog.jgc.org/2010/08/shut-up-and-ship.html http://blog.jgc.org/2010/08/shut-up-and-ship.html) which I probably stole from Zawodny. The concept video is very annoying because of the 'arty' way it's been filmed. They have shown three ideas: sort mail by sender, sort by conversation and show me all attachments. So far, so good. What they haven't mentioned is any form of search functionality or foldering. Looking at my inbox right now I see a set of separate conversations from different people about the same topic (in this case, OSCON). What you want to get on top of email is automatic foldering (pet topic) so that you get an intelligent view of your email. What's shown in the video seems to be pretty basic wrapped up in a flowery dress to make it look like something amazing. I can believe that people would appreciate clean email interfaces, but this seems like it doesn't take into account real world stuff like figuring out who's cc:ed on a message or what the subject line is, or what happens when an exchange of messages stops being between two people and starts being between three or more.
- Derbasti 15y ago
  Which is to say, it does not match your style of interacting with email. Many Gmail users out there (Facebook mail, even?) are using email very differently and programs like this (Sparrow, Lion Mail) are catering for them. Personally, I don't ever use folders. I've been there, and I'm glad I got it over with. I have no use whatsoever for Outlook-like complexity and complex rule sets. And please don't think that this is just because I don't deal with email a lot. But there are different kinds of people who use email in different ways. To each his own.
  - wyclif 15y ago
    What is the best material you've read on why folders in email are inefficient? Do you have a blog post, paper, &c. that would be good reading on this subject?
    - sunchild 15y ago
      The argument is simple: Folders are hierarchical, while tags are for faceted search. It's search vs. sort at its core.
mahrain 15y ago
Finally a client that merges / blurs the line between my email conversations and my IM conversations. I like to have a Skype open as a continuous conversation with people, like a link dump or easy way to share files. This seems to do the same for email. Great.
webmonkeyuk 15y ago
Sorry, I fell asleep somewhere about 10 seconds into the video when the dreary voice and dreamy music started
smickie 15y ago
Attachment view is one innovation that stands out, abstracting attachments from emails to allow independent file-system like browsing of them would be great. This client might be a little late to the party in terms of clean UI as something new, what with Mail 5 coming out soon, Sparrow (assuming your a desktop mail kind of person). On a side note, that whole webpage as an image is making my skin crawl.
mbrzuzy 15y ago
I couldn't really tell much about it with all the images being shown from a side perspective.
frazerb 15y ago
I used NEO from Caelo (nelsons email organiser) for five years+ [[ employer INSISTED on using freakin' Msft and Outlook ]]. NEO is an overlay (non-invasive) on top of Outlook that does all this and more - free text search etc. NEO saved me an hour a week at least. [[ No personal relationship with Caelo I just think NEO is awesome. ]]
soofaloofa 15y ago
Auto playing the video is a complete turn-off for me.
brown9-2 15y ago
I must be one of the only people out there who thinks that the experience of sending/receiving emails in Gmail and/or Outlook is just fine today, thanks.
rglover 15y ago
Why isn't this being developed? The design looks great, but like many are saying...a concept is only the halfway point. The video sold me, but it'd be nice if I could at least sign up for a beta invite or something. Seeing "concept" all over the page left me a bit hopeless of ever using the product.
pnathan 15y ago
it's about time new views were tossed around about email. Every email client I've used looks like a clone from Netscape Communicator.
- IanDrake 15y ago
  So true. I'm surprised at the level of indignation in the comments here. I think there's room to make email better for different groups of users and I think this might be a good start.
tluyben2 15y ago
WHAT IS THAT MUSIC? :( I just stuck a fork in my ear!! Thanks man. Or, in other words, if you make a video, don't distract people by giving them suicide feelings!
jessedhillon 15y ago
A person could (easily?) build this using context.io (http://context.io http://context.io)
grgg 15y ago
The "minimalistic" email compose window will baffle and annoy anyone not in the "focus mode" Lifehack community. It does not look user friendly at all. To my knowledge, writing email in a window with a subject field and a send button was not causing anyone friction. I don't think the world is ready or looking for windows with unlabeled fields and hidden buttons.
micheljansen 15y ago
For a concept based on "a critical analysis of how people manage their emails and use their email clients" it contains an awful lot of design flaws. The general workflow is pretty cool; different view modes, conversations etc. but then I see how the mother writes an email in the video (between 0:35 and 0:55) and I am surprised she can figure anything out. The email pane is an intimidating white modal window, that does not give any visual cues as to what you can do with it. How can I drag it? Can I type anywhere? How do I send or dismiss it? To whom will it be sent? Apparently messages have a subject (at least they are still email), but this is implicit. Having taught some older people how to use email, I know they struggle a lot with the concept of having a subject and they often confuse message and subject. With this subject, I am pretty sure the average "mom" will end up sending every message with the subject "Dear David" or something like that. The sequence is concluded by the woman sending the email (around 0:53). She moves the mouse to the bottom of the message and all of a sudden a fucking tool bar pops up out of nowhere. There is no indication that that thing was even there, so how is anyone going to know that was there to begin with? Don't get me wrong, there is a lot that can be improved about the way we interact with email, and there are a lot of things in this concept that I really like (for example the contact-list on the left, allowing you to drop a photo on a person's face to send it to them), but they introduce new flaws that are unacceptable. The footer of the page says the authors are from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, so I would have expected that rather than spending a lot of time on creating a sexy video (mission accomplished) they had put their concept to the test with some actual users. No doubt these flaws would have come to light immediately.
akrymski 15y ago
Interesting demo video. We've actually built something along those lines: www.post.fm
chum4ever 15y ago
I am not sure if anyone here looked into Zoho Mail. With Multi level Folders, Flags and labels , combined with auto-filters, it is a boon to those who want their emails in an organized manner. www.zoho.com/mail

162 points by basil 15y ago

Nothing new.

Looks cool and polished. Email client space is heating up, I wonder how this will fare against sparrow. By the way, does anyone know how the DOF effect in the video is achieved? Guess it was added during post processing in software.

xelfer 15y ago
I'm guessing it was filmed with a Digital SLR with a high aperture lens, something like a 50mm 1.4 or 1.8 (doesn't look shallow enough for a 1.2).
- evilswan 15y ago
  Agree, looks about 1.4 fully-open.
danieldk 15y ago
Indeed, more competition is good. Apple has finally spiced up Mail.app to have a conversation view, and far better filtering.
- chum4ever 15y ago
  Did you try mail.zoho.com, The conversation view they have is interesting.

dfischer 15y ago

I really don't want to use desktop software anymore. Am I the only one that feels this way?

mvzink 15y ago
No, you seem to be with the majority. But I really don't want to use web software any more. I might be the only one, but hopefully not.
- TeMPOraL 15y ago
  You're not the only one. I don't really like web applications too. It is irrational of me, but I really feel better about desktop, on-line software. I think I don't really trust "the Internet" and "the Cloud", and would like my computer to be usable even after the whole networking infrastructure burns down.
  - gjm11 15y ago
    I tend to feel the same way, but you have to ask: Which is more likely to burn down, the whole networking infrastructure or my house?
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - TeMPOraL 15y ago
      Yes, you have. That's why I said it's a bit irrational for me. I can't shake off the feeling that the whole Internet will go down one day, even though it's more likely that a car will hit me twice before. Maybe it's because I'm looking for solutions that will last for long years, not the apps that I have to change every three or so months. I guess this is not possible nowdays.
    - a3_nm 15y ago
      You can keep the master copy at home but do (encrypted) backups on the cloud. I find it much more reassuring than the other way round (put everything in the cloud, maybe backup locally every now and then).
    - Gormo 15y ago
      Perhaps the OP was using hyperbole: it does seem more likely for reliance on external infrastructure to be disrupted by something beyond your control than for your own tools to stop functioning in a way that you can't correct. There are also other effects of externalizing your tools that don't relate to continuity of uptime: levels of complexity, adaptability, security, and manageability of change all have different values for web-based and desktop software.

threepointone 15y ago

Sigur Ros for the soundtrack? Nicely done!

steffoz 15y ago

definitely interesting the distraction free sending email dialog!

kefs 15y ago

autoplay? :(

brown9-2 15y ago
I'd love to see the results of an A/B test to see how people respond to autoplaying videos. Seems like a big turn-off.

TeMPOraL 15y ago

While I think that the video would use a change in voice-over (something more clear and more emotional), there was something touching that moved me near the end and made me think about people and simple, day-to-day life. Maybe it's the sountrack. Anyway, well done :).

michael_dorfman 15y ago
The soundtrack is "Ágætis Byrjun" by Sigur Rós-- I'm not sure how they'd feel about their stuff being used in a commercial setting.
- socksy 15y ago
  Apparently not necessarily well: http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/media/homage-or-fromage.php http://www.sigur-ros.co.uk/media/homage-or-fromage.php They might be wise to change the music.
- jerryr 15y ago
  Yeah, and the vocals compete with the narrative, so they might want to change it regardless.

dreww 15y ago

i think this is intended to be, and will always remain, vaporware. or perhaps i misunderstand what is meant by "concept".

haydenchambers 15y ago

theres no reason why this sort of experience couldn’t be achieved my merging gmail and g+ a little more closely

shimonamit 15y ago

Aside question: Can anyone elaborate a little bit on the camera, lenses, and graphical effects used to produce the blur/focus effect in this video?

tincholio 15y ago
I don't know how they did it, but it could have been easily done with a DSLR with video capabilities and a decent fast lens. Note that the camera was mostly static, except for example when doing minute panning movements (not too smooth, so probably they didn't have the right type tripod head) towards the right and shifting focus so as to put the viewer's attention on the different icons.
- shimonamit 15y ago
  Ah, thanks. So most if not all the smarts were in the camera, not in the post-shooting graphic polish?
  - marksu 15y ago
    Simulated Depth of Field on flat surfaces like this can easily be made in post production using After Effects for example. Here is an old tutorial I found http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/2d_depth_of_field/ http://www.videocopilot.net/tutorials/2d_depth_of_field/ You could probably add even more flair by using a 3d camera in AE with DOF enabled, I've done this before and it can look really slick if used well.
- socksy 15y ago
  I didn't spot any panning at all - just how abruptly focus had changed. However, there were quite a few jumps where panning would have been more appropriate (imo). One trick to getting smooth pans with a cheap tripod is to use a rubber band around the handle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6fMcJ18aA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fj6fMcJ18aA

ssn 15y ago

Is this being developed? I think that there are some original and interesting ideas in there.

Derbasti 15y ago

They are advancing the concept of 'conversations' that Gmail introduced in an interesting direction. Basically, the second tab at the top is the Gmail conversation view. This view collects emails by topic, which makes it behave more like a threaded discussion board in a way. The interesting part is the first tab though, the 'people' view. They seem to go for an IM-style persistent conversation log between a fixed set of people. That is quite an interesting way of looking at conversations, pushing email further from the original 'digital letter' towards shorter, more transient messages. Basically, it tries to make email behave more like a persistent IM chat. I find it interesting how the email protocol gets pushed more and more in the background and applications implement their own interfaces on top of it. Email seems to evolve from the definite way of sending stuff over the internet towards just one other communication protocol that is more or less on equal footing with, say, Jabber, or Facebook, or maybe even Twitter. What with Facebook integrating email into its site and Google dumping IM chat logs in your Gmail inbox, there is even some sort of cross-protocol talk. This gets even more obvious with Facebook or Google+ or Twitter sending you emails whenever you receive messages on their platform. Now if you could reply to these emails and the platform would 'do the right thing', this would actually implement email as a ubiquitous interface to all of these services. Interesting times!

jorangreef 15y ago
The concept screenshots have been designed using data that displays well in an IM-style conversation log, but how would it work for traditionally formatted email (e.g. Dear, regards, long signature, messy disclaimer, quoted text, html newsletters)? That is where the sender has one idea of how email should look like, and the receiver has another?
- Derbasti 15y ago
  I would guess that just like in Gmail, quoted texts get collapsed, signatures get faded. Basically, Gmail works, too, so this is probably a solved problem. And personally, I think the world would be a better place without disclaimers anyway, so they might as well delete them outright. But maybe that is just me.
15y ago

knowtheory 15y ago

So... they've turned email into Facebook? Is that the idea? :P

farlington 15y ago
I think it's a great idea. Don't most people you know use facebook instead of email for personal correspondence?
- knowtheory 15y ago
  no? For one i loathe Facebook's interface. But by and large nearly all of my communication is by instant messenger, skype, email, phone, or some combination of the above. And I basically live online since i work in a distributed team.
  - farlington 15y ago
    That's cool. I use many different means to communicate too, mostly for work. But my friends and family members? For personal messages, like stuff that really matters, they send messages on facebook. My brothers, my sister, my mom, my dad—I can't remember the last time any of them emailed me anything. Maybe a travel itinerary. It could be that my experience, or the experience of my friends/family, is atypical, but I think there are a lot of people—tens or hundreds of millions—who use facebook that way, as their primary communication tool.

MaysonL 15y ago

So, is this merely a design fiction, or are there plans for this to actually exist and be available somewhere?

hm2k 15y ago

Their homepage is all image, no substance. I'm guessing their product is the same.

iaskwhy 15y ago

I think a lot about this since email clients still seem like something done by a developer without wasting much time thinking about the user experience. For instance, I'd say most personal email conversations are between only two people and yet we still can't see it as the usual chat view which is much more easier to read, like shown on the video and the screenshots. Please do it and keep improving it as there's a lot of potencial here. Good work!

rwmj 15y ago

Where is the analysis of how people already use email and how it fails? How is this going to improve the experience? There are a ton of research areas for email/messaging, such as those below. This seems to address none of them. - better searching - multiple sources (email, SMS, RSS, twitter .. in one place) - automatic classification of incoming email, flagging important items, separating personal and business etc - integrating to-do lists

jorangreef 15y ago
I am working on a web-based email client (https://ronomon.com https://ronomon.com) with offline access, instant boot, constant time search, and support for roughly four million emails. It takes some new approaches to threading, meta-discussions, multiple sources, attachments, and simple non-structured text to-do lists, and re-imagines the email client as a multiplayer rather than single-player tool. Could I let you know when it's ready?
- mike-cardwell 15y ago
  Please let me know when this is ready. My contact details are in my profile. I love trying to break stuff like this, and I've managed to break lots of webmail and email clients in the past.
  - jorangreef 15y ago
    Thanks Mike, challenge accepted.
Derbasti 15y ago
Funny, all of that is in Gmail. (if you count IM/Buzz/G+ integration as part of 'multiple sources')
farlington 15y ago
It looks to me like it's going to improve the experience by making the experience more like facebook's messaging app. Most of my friends send messages via facebook rather than through email, because it's a better and more personal experience. Taking some of that experience to an email client is a killer idea. Why do email clients have to take their cues from other email clients? They feel stuck in the 90s. Many people have replaced email with facebook for personal use—it only makes sense that email clients should go there.

adamtulinius 15y ago

It is weird how replying on the conversations tab makes the user write the reply above the original message.

krmmalik 15y ago

Shame all the innovation in email clients seems to be happening predominantly on the Mac. Havent seen any Windows versions of any of these kind of apps. I wonder if we'll ever see an iPad version of anything like this, because i'd certainly be interested. On a side note, this further cements the idea that its still worthwhile to disrupt boring or old markets if they havent had disruption for a long time.

Derbasti 15y ago
Maybe this is because Windows is still predominantly a business market (except for games), where feature lists are more important than elegance or simplicity. Hence Outlook and its kin.
- mattmanser 15y ago
  Kin? There's just outlook these days.
  - Derbasti 15y ago
    Isn't there, like, Eudora and some Oracle stuff, and several other corporate content management blobs that do complex email management, too?
    - dragonquest 15y ago
      Pegasus Mail (http://www.pmail.com http://www.pmail.com) is still going strong, slowly trudging towards the 5.0 release. Though there were a few hiccups related to the financial viability a couple of years ago, development is still going on and the product is still free.
  - bonaldi 15y ago
    Lotus Notes. It will never die.
- krmmalik 15y ago
  Perhaps. I dont really know either way, but its still a shame. If Windows 8 delivers on its HTML5/JS native experience promise, then that could change a lot of things in the future, since many developers could develop for the desktop and web platform simultaneously - Although knowing Microsoft maybe thats a little too ambitious.

chrischen 15y ago

Turn this into a web interface, allow some emails to be retrieved by the public, and you've got another facebook clone!

markokocic 15y ago

Seems like the concept of providing more "human" or "natural" interaction between user and computer is becoming more and more pervasive, and Persona is just another example about that. I don't know what to think about it. As a casual user, I like it. It make interaction with the computer effortless. On the other side, as a power user, I still like to Unix philosophy of small powerfull tools and an easy ways to combine and automate them. I really hope someone will eventually find a way to mix both of those concepts and bring software to the next level.

fingerprinter 15y ago

I like what he is saying and what they are showing, but email and particularly this type of email client will be all about the small touches. I just can't get a sense for something like this until I feel it for myself.

beaumartinez 15y ago

I don't normally mind artsy but this is ridiculous. The video is zoomed, focused, and tilted to excess. Am I supposed to get a meaningful impression of it that way?

nateberkopec 15y ago
Yeah, someone's been watching way too many Google product videos and decided to turn it up to 11.
geraldalewis 15y ago
I was at a bar with a friend the other night, and he took a picture using a flash. I took one by holding very still so I could take a longer exposure without the flash. His image accurately recorded the scene in detail. Mine recorded the feel. I think you're supposed to get an emotional impression, instead of an explicit idea of how the software works.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  My emotional impression was that I couldn't see the bloody software. It was more like a wedding movie for the MacBooks than a product presentation.

geuis 15y ago

1) Build it. Concept videos are nice and all, but its vaporware till people can use it. 2) I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another. Build this as a web app, not a strict desktop client. Also, as a web app its relatively easy these days to wrap it in a framework that will present it as a desktop app if someone wants to use it that way.

rmc 15y ago
I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another. Build this as a web app, not a strict desktop client. The demo has it running on OSX. OSX users are more open to the idea of having (and paying for) a desktop application. From a business perspective, an OSX desktop application might make sense.
nhebb 15y ago
2) I think most people these days have switched to webmail in one form or another If you're interested in stats, Campaign Monitor posts a monthly report on email client popularity: http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/ http://www.campaignmonitor.com/stats/email-clients/ Also note the Movers and Shakers stats at the bottom.
- ra 15y ago
  That's a nice resource. Thanks!
- danohuiginn 15y ago
  There sure is a lot written about gmail, relative to its market share. apparently hotmail and yahoo mail are both more popular.
  - judofyr 15y ago
    Note the fine print: The email client a person is using can only be detected if images are displayed. This can give an inflated weighting to email clients that display images by default, such as Outlook 2000 and the iPhone. It will also provide a lesser weighting to those that block images by default such as Gmail and Outlook 2007. Those email clients that aren't capable of displaying images, such as older Blackberry models and other mobile devices cannot be included in this study.

jgrahamc 15y ago

I shall now deploy my catch phrase: Shut Up and Ship! (http://blog.jgc.org/2010/08/shut-up-and-ship.html http://blog.jgc.org/2010/08/shut-up-and-ship.html) which I probably stole from Zawodny. The concept video is very annoying because of the 'arty' way it's been filmed. They have shown three ideas: sort mail by sender, sort by conversation and show me all attachments. So far, so good. What they haven't mentioned is any form of search functionality or foldering. Looking at my inbox right now I see a set of separate conversations from different people about the same topic (in this case, OSCON). What you want to get on top of email is automatic foldering (pet topic) so that you get an intelligent view of your email. What's shown in the video seems to be pretty basic wrapped up in a flowery dress to make it look like something amazing. I can believe that people would appreciate clean email interfaces, but this seems like it doesn't take into account real world stuff like figuring out who's cc:ed on a message or what the subject line is, or what happens when an exchange of messages stops being between two people and starts being between three or more.

Derbasti 15y ago
Which is to say, it does not match your style of interacting with email. Many Gmail users out there (Facebook mail, even?) are using email very differently and programs like this (Sparrow, Lion Mail) are catering for them. Personally, I don't ever use folders. I've been there, and I'm glad I got it over with. I have no use whatsoever for Outlook-like complexity and complex rule sets. And please don't think that this is just because I don't deal with email a lot. But there are different kinds of people who use email in different ways. To each his own.
- wyclif 15y ago
  What is the best material you've read on why folders in email are inefficient? Do you have a blog post, paper, &c. that would be good reading on this subject?
  - sunchild 15y ago
    The argument is simple: Folders are hierarchical, while tags are for faceted search. It's search vs. sort at its core.

mahrain 15y ago

Finally a client that merges / blurs the line between my email conversations and my IM conversations. I like to have a Skype open as a continuous conversation with people, like a link dump or easy way to share files. This seems to do the same for email. Great.

webmonkeyuk 15y ago

Sorry, I fell asleep somewhere about 10 seconds into the video when the dreary voice and dreamy music started

smickie 15y ago

Attachment view is one innovation that stands out, abstracting attachments from emails to allow independent file-system like browsing of them would be great. This client might be a little late to the party in terms of clean UI as something new, what with Mail 5 coming out soon, Sparrow (assuming your a desktop mail kind of person). On a side note, that whole webpage as an image is making my skin crawl.

mbrzuzy 15y ago

I couldn't really tell much about it with all the images being shown from a side perspective.

frazerb 15y ago

I used NEO from Caelo (nelsons email organiser) for five years+ [[ employer INSISTED on using freakin' Msft and Outlook ]]. NEO is an overlay (non-invasive) on top of Outlook that does all this and more - free text search etc. NEO saved me an hour a week at least. [[ No personal relationship with Caelo I just think NEO is awesome. ]]

soofaloofa 15y ago

Auto playing the video is a complete turn-off for me.

brown9-2 15y ago

I must be one of the only people out there who thinks that the experience of sending/receiving emails in Gmail and/or Outlook is just fine today, thanks.

rglover 15y ago

Why isn't this being developed? The design looks great, but like many are saying...a concept is only the halfway point. The video sold me, but it'd be nice if I could at least sign up for a beta invite or something. Seeing "concept" all over the page left me a bit hopeless of ever using the product.

pnathan 15y ago

it's about time new views were tossed around about email. Every email client I've used looks like a clone from Netscape Communicator.

IanDrake 15y ago
So true. I'm surprised at the level of indignation in the comments here. I think there's room to make email better for different groups of users and I think this might be a good start.

tluyben2 15y ago

WHAT IS THAT MUSIC? :( I just stuck a fork in my ear!! Thanks man. Or, in other words, if you make a video, don't distract people by giving them suicide feelings!

jessedhillon 15y ago

A person could (easily?) build this using context.io (http://context.io http://context.io)

grgg 15y ago

The "minimalistic" email compose window will baffle and annoy anyone not in the "focus mode" Lifehack community. It does not look user friendly at all. To my knowledge, writing email in a window with a subject field and a send button was not causing anyone friction. I don't think the world is ready or looking for windows with unlabeled fields and hidden buttons.

micheljansen 15y ago

For a concept based on "a critical analysis of how people manage their emails and use their email clients" it contains an awful lot of design flaws. The general workflow is pretty cool; different view modes, conversations etc. but then I see how the mother writes an email in the video (between 0:35 and 0:55) and I am surprised she can figure anything out. The email pane is an intimidating white modal window, that does not give any visual cues as to what you can do with it. How can I drag it? Can I type anywhere? How do I send or dismiss it? To whom will it be sent? Apparently messages have a subject (at least they are still email), but this is implicit. Having taught some older people how to use email, I know they struggle a lot with the concept of having a subject and they often confuse message and subject. With this subject, I am pretty sure the average "mom" will end up sending every message with the subject "Dear David" or something like that. The sequence is concluded by the woman sending the email (around 0:53). She moves the mouse to the bottom of the message and all of a sudden a fucking tool bar pops up out of nowhere. There is no indication that that thing was even there, so how is anyone going to know that was there to begin with? Don't get me wrong, there is a lot that can be improved about the way we interact with email, and there are a lot of things in this concept that I really like (for example the contact-list on the left, allowing you to drop a photo on a person's face to send it to them), but they introduce new flaws that are unacceptable. The footer of the page says the authors are from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, so I would have expected that rather than spending a lot of time on creating a sexy video (mission accomplished) they had put their concept to the test with some actual users. No doubt these flaws would have come to light immediately.

akrymski 15y ago

Interesting demo video. We've actually built something along those lines: www.post.fm

chum4ever 15y ago

I am not sure if anyone here looked into Zoho Mail. With Multi level Folders, Flags and labels , combined with auto-filters, it is a boon to those who want their emails in an organized manner. www.zoho.com/mail